This was published in the July/August/September/October 2003
issue of
Juggle – The Official Magazine of the International Jugglers' Association

9.50.020 Conduct on Public Property, Monuments,
and Lawns:

No person, after having been notified by
a law enforcement officer that he or she is in violation
of the prohibition in this section, shall:

… (d) In the … CBD central
business … districts, intentionally throw, discharge
launch, or spill any solid object (including but not limited
to footballs, hacky sacks, baseballs, beach balls, Frisbees,
or other similar devices) or liquid substances (with the
exception of bubble street performers who otherwise comply
with all applicable statutes and ordinances) or otherwise
cause any object or substance to be thrown, discharged,
launched, spilled, or to become airborne.

Okay, the City Council of Santa Cruz, California didn't actually
intend to outlaw juggling when they passed their set of new “downtown
ordinances” in the summer of 2002. They actually meant to send
the Hacky Sack players packing.

The downtown sidewalks have never been a perfect location for street
performing – there are only a few places where a large crowd
might gather – but that didn't keep the Flying Karamazov Brothers
from starting out there. Tom Noddy launched his career by performing
Bubble Magic along with his puppet show there, Bob Brozman, Thoth,
Gillian Welch, and others have graced this coastal community with
their skills over the years. But in 2002, the “progressive” City
Council, responding to a fevered campaign set off by the downtown
merchants and the local daily newspaper, offered up the performers
as scapegoats for the decline in business income downtown. They didn't
seem to notice that the entire country, and the world, were in the
midst of a decline in retail sales.

To be fair, most of the proffered “downtown ordinances” were
really meant to regulate or restrict panhandling or generally sitting
around. But the special efforts that had always been made to exempt
street performers from these kinds of laws were now set aside in
a hurried effort to get some new laws on the books before the Council
went into summer break. And there was this one special Hacky Sack
ordinance.

The legitimate concern was that sports activity on the downtown
sidewalk by groups of young men intent on their game sometimes endangered
other passersby (or “low income seniors” as the local
newspaper explained it to those who may not have understood the urgency).

But then, why stop at Hacky Sack if they are going to go to all
the trouble to pass a law? They lifted some wordage from some other
city's ordinance and it seemed to cover other antisocial behavior
as well. (“Liquid substance”? Spitting maybe?) They did
then worry that this would set them up for ridicule. Was it possible
that some police officer in the future might use this law to stop
bubble blowing? In the town that is the home of the world's first
professional bubble blower? Tom Noddy had gone from performing on
the sidewalks of Santa Cruz directly to three appearances on the
Tonight Show back in the 1980s. Now he travels the world presenting
his Bubble Magic to audiences in nightclubs, universities, variete
theaters, mathematics conferences and other venues. (He also sometimes
finds himself writing about himself in the third person.)

They added that peculiar bubble-blower's exemption to the city's
municipal code. My friends teased me about my “political pull” when
they saw that, but when Tim Furst of the Karamazovs pointed out to
me that the wording of the proposed law could allow it to be used
to stop jugglers I was much less amused by the special exemption
for bubbles.

I came back to town and met with City Council members just before
they did the “second reading” of the proposal. A majority
vote on this reading would make it a new law to be enforced downtown.
I told the Council members that it could outlaw juggling and they
assured me that it would not. They thought that I was just putting
the worst face on what they were doing. They knew that I also opposed
their other proposals that would force all street performers to step
away from the buildings and only perform at the curbside, facing
inward. But this anti-juggling risk was of another order and I just
couldn't get them to sit down and look at it reasonably. It clearly
would outlaw juggling they insisted that it wouldn't. They were on
a fast moving train and they wouldn't slow down and look around.
They passed the law while assuring me that it would not outlaw juggling.

One year later, I was walking the downtown street and saw a police
officer interrupting the performance of a young clown. He was delighting
a crowd that included over a dozen cherubic children. I overheard
the officer explaining to the clown that juggling was now illegal
in Santa Cruz.

Sigh.

No sense arguing with the cop; she was reading the text of the law
the same way that I had read it last year. I went back to the City
Council and met with several of them individually. Some thought that
they remembered that juggling might have been excluded from this
law; others didn't remember anything of the sort. In either case,
it was plain from the reading of the text that juggling was outlawed,
so maybe I should encourage all potential jugglers to apply for a
special permit that will allow some desk-jockey in the city administration
to decide whether or not they will “permit” each applicant
to juggle or not.

“No thank you.”

Instead, I rummaged through my toy box and found some balls, and
also found some old Karamazov clubs in my collection. I printed copies
of the law, picked up some lemons, and called the press to announce
that would be juggling in “apparent violation” of the
law downtown in the middle of the day.

Let me confess here … I am an excellent bubble blower, maybe
the best there is. (That isn't much of a brag; remember, every bubble
that I have ever blown has popped.) But I ain't much of a juggler.
My friend Tim Furst had agreed to come downtown to juggle if it was
needed to make a point. However, the moment had arrived and Tim was
out of town. The law didn't specify that only good juggling was illegal;
bad jugglers qualified as outlaws too, and I felt fully qualified.

The news cameras rolled, the print media interviewed me, and friends
gathered, but no police showed up in front of the downtown police
substation. The press left and my friends wandered off (a reflection
perhaps on my ability to hold a crowd with my juggling skills). I
juggled balls, I juggled lemons, I tried to juggle those big ol'
clubs, I even crumpled up copies of the law and juggled those. No
cops; no ticket.

I did want to get the ticket. I was in town, I knew the law, I knew
the history of the passage of the law, I was a known character in
town, I could speak to the issue better than most, and I wanted the
test case to be soon, before they chased other jugglers from town
like they had with that young clown. I picked up my props and went
down the street and found a willing police officer. She was polite,
her supervisor was polite, I juggled three lemons, and they cited
me. I didn't want to sign the citation and have the case fade away
when I went to court and the police stayed away; I wanted attention
on this case and the press was gone now, so I declined to sign the
citation. They took me to a judge and then to jail.

This is normally a “book and release” situation. I quick
photo and fingerprinting (who knows, I may b an international juggling
outlaw wanted by the feds or Interpol) and then let me go. Usually
it takes an hour, two if they are very busy. In my case it took 13
hours. They kept me in the holding tank while drunks came in, sobered
up, and were released. At 6 a.m. the next day I was released. I went
home and wrote about my experience for the press, the City Council
members, and for some juggler friends. I sent out the email and within
a day the same email list received letters from the Flying Karamazov
Brothers announcing that they would come home to Santa Cruz to juggle
downtown. The Ks are adored here in town – “Loco Boys
Make Good on Broadway/Hollywood/Internationally” storied are
written whenever they move their art to the next level.

The city of Santa Cruz passed the law on June 24, 2002. On June
26, 2003, I was arrested for juggling. For one year juggling was
outlawed in this town. On June 27, the day after my arrest, the Karamazovs
and others suggested that they and other jugglers would come to town
to violate that unjust law.

I imagined City Council members trembling as they read the letters
that told of the K's intent to put out a call to jugglers at the
International Jugglers' Association convention to come to town to
join us for some illegal juggling fun. I booked a hall to accommodate
a nighttime show/demonstration to follow the day of juggle arrests.
Political work just got to be really fun.

Thirteen days later, on July 9, 2003, the Santa Cruz City Council
passed an “emergency resolution” to re-legalize juggling.

I do love that, in the midst of war abroad, homeland security crises
in America, and budget crises here in town, the matter of juggling
had risen to the state of “emergency.”

I do hope that the jugglers who read this publication will consider
downtown Santa Cruz as a stopover for performance. We don't have the
very best pitches for crowd-gathering, but believe me, there are people
in town now who have considered the value of your art. We almost lost
it.